34 new C. Fla. hotels, 4,300 jobs in the pipeline by 2016

So it’s no surprise the City Beautiful has 34 new hotel properties with a total of 8,600 rooms in the pipeline during the next four years, said Atlanta-based PKF Hospitality Research. That would create up to 4,300 permanent new hotel jobs, according to industry estimates.

Central Florida hotel fundamentals are expected to continue to climb through 2016 — to a 70.2 percent occupancy rate and $119.73 average room rate, said PKF Hospitality Research.

Hotel room occupancy in Orlando was 65.3 percent in May, the most recent data available, up from 63.5 percent in May 2011. The average room rate was $94.71, up 2.3 percent from $92.55 for the same period last year.

“The best time to develop a new hotel is at the bottom of a cycle, which is where we’re at now,” said Dennis Hale, hotel expert and general manager of the new Embassy Suites Orlando in Lake Buena Vista South. “The problem is with finding credit.”

The Embassy Suites Orlando in Lake Buena Vista South, which has 300 rooms and 40,000 square feet of meeting space, will open in late September and will hire 90 workers beginning this month.

The hotel will hold a job fair July 24-25 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Caribe Royale Hotel & Convention Center’s Curacao Room at 8101 World Center Drive near Walt Disney World. The hotel, which is part of the Hilton Worldwide family, posts jobs at http://careers.hilton.com.

Hale said the advantage to building now is it would bring a new hotel online just in time for the market rebound.

“One of the first product types to fall in a recession is hotels, because they are basically one-night leases,” said Michael Weinberg, associate director and hospitality industry expert with the local office of commercial real estate and capital markets services firm Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP. “However, now we’re seeing hotels were one of the first to recover with strong occupancy and increasing room rates, meaning now people think it’s time to build.”

But 13 of the hotels PKF Hospitality Research expects to be built locally during the next four years — independent or unclassified properties with 3,052 rooms — may not come to fruition due to lack of capital for unbranded hotels, he said. “Many of those hotels may be by smaller owners who don’t have a brand or history, which will make it less likely lenders would provide capital.”

Still, that leaves several new hotels coming online during the next four years, including:

• Walt Disney World’s 1,984-room, 750-employee Art of Animation resort, which still is looking to fill 300 jobs for its 320-suite Lion King and 864-room Little Mermaid wings set to open in August and September, respectively.

Abe Pizam, dean at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management, said the success of hotels will rely on how well they pre-planned their business model.

“Many of the successful hotels right now are ones that work with travel groups and have that segment of the market business secured that they can build on,” he said.

Pizam said the hospitality market and tourism-related employment may be seeing a light at the end of the tunnel as the international markets that drive tourism — South America and Europe — remain fairly strong.

“This growth in employment is tied to the success we’re seeing from the South American and European travel markets, specifically Brazil and the U.K.,” said Pizam. “As long as those markets keep it up, we should see these hiring trends continue.”